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Welcome to Hockey in Society’s Weekly Links post. This feature highlights articles or blog entries that are related to Hockey in Society’s areas of interest and that may be of interest to the site’s readers.

[Note: Apologies for not writing a Weekly Links last week. I was under the weather and did not get the chance to put up a post last weekend.]

[Edit: Three links added (March 11, 2012, 12:09 AM)

Hockey Links

• Fantastic post by Ellen Etchingham about the changing nature of hockey: “There is no essential spirit of hockey, no single tradition to refer to, there is only the hockey we knew as children and the hockey we know now. It is not one thing. It has never been one thing. It evolves, in ways technological, cultural, and wholly accidental.” [Backhand Shelf]
• Bruce Dowbiggen with a fascinating article about Canadian NHL clubs’ unhappiness with Hockey Night in Canada and the CBC. A must read. [Globe and Mail]
• I wrote earlier in the week about Patrick Burke and the You Can Play project. Burke participated in an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday. [Reddit, h/t to Hockey in Society reader Alison for the link]
• Puck Buddys concluded its series of interviews with an anonymous teenage gay hockey player, in which the player reveals his identity and speaks about his experiences in hockey and at high school. [Puck Buddys]
• Ryan Lambert critiques the NHL for promoting dangerous hits, such as the one made by Niklas Kronwall on Jakub Voracek earlier in the week, which NHL.com declared to be a candidate a “hit of the year.” [Puck Daddy]
• Paul Busch with an open letter to the NHLPA, urging it to support a ban on fighting in hockey. [It’s Not Part of the Game]
• David Johnston, Canada’s Governor General and a former hockey player at Harvard University, voices his opposition to “fighting and goonery” in hockey. [Globe and Mail]
• Chris Peters on why banning fighting in junior hockey will be a good thing. [United States of Hockey]
• As the Province of Ontario threatens to eliminate a tax break to professional sports teams, the Ottawa Senators cry poor and threaten to fold. (Sssssh! No one mention that Senators owner Eugene Melnyk is one of Canada’s 100 richest people, with a net worth just under $1 billion.) [National Post]
• Interesting piece from Adrian Dater about the former prevalence of smoking in the NHL. Times certainly have changed. [SI.com, via Puck Daddy]
• A new study suggest that outdoor shinny may soon be a thing of the past, given the effects of climate change. [Globe and Mail]
• The New York Times reports that the NHL and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund will provide hockey scholarships to students at historically black colleges in the United States, with the long-term aim of increasing African American participation in the sport. [Slap Shot]
• Via Puck Daddy, two responses to a Sports Illustrated gallery of “puck bunnies” – that is, female hockey fans who were inaccurately assigned this pejorative label – that defend female fans and dispute the puck bunny label. [Hockey Broad; Aerys Sports]
• Bob McKenzine reports that Saskatoon is looking to acquire an NHL franchise, and has a proposal in place to upgrade the Credit Union Centre to make it appropriate for NHL hockey. [TSN]